HugePoker

We’re 2/3 through the Muckleshoot Summer Classic series, with the main event ($1000 buyin) tomorrow. I had a good run yesterday in the $300 event, ultimately finishing 13th out of 252 players for $960. I was in good shape in today’s $500 tournament with 80-90 players left (out of 232) when I hit a death spiral, losing a big pot with JJ, then getting crippled by a nasty bad beat with my AQs losing to A8o, and finally running AJ into AA to end it all, finishing 75th for zero dollars. Josh has flown out for the series and has not cashed in either event so far, running into lost coinflips and other mishaps along the way (he’s written about his Seattle visit in his blog). Both of us look to tomorrow’s main event for redemption. We keep talking about wanting to end up with a 1-2 finish - certainly tomorrow would be the best time for it, and would be reminiscent of the 1-2 finish at the Muckleshoot tournament between me and Deb from 4 years ago. I won’t let him win, but in the end I’d be pretty happy to finish second to him…

I’ll be tweeting updates on my twitter page … Josh’s page is here

I went to the Tulalip Indian Reservation casino on Sunday to play in what I thought was a satellite for a WPT event coming up in Reno next month. It turned out not to be … well, sort of … they were giving three “seats” into the WPT event to the top three finishers, but in this case a “seat” meant $2500 in cash (which you could use to buy in to the Reno event *if you wanted to*) plus a $1500 travel voucher (which you could use to travel to Reno *if you want* and if you can somehow manage to spend $1500 traveling to *Reno*). So not really a satellite, but instead a regular cash tournament in which they have taken $12,000 out of the prize pool and divided it evenly between 1st, 2nd and 3rd (and in which they’ve collected some extra rake because they certainly didn’t pay $1500 in cash for those travel vouchers). In my defense over not knowing the real terms of the tournament, I can say that at least I figured out what the exact story was within about ten minutes of sitting down, whereas there were players *deep into the final table* who didn’t know and didn’t seem to care what exactly the prizes were, let alone have the faintest clue about how the prize distribution might impact strategy. For a while it looked like this ignorance might have a nasty impact on me, but in the end it worked to my advantage.

$400 buyin, 99 players, ten places paid (with the big extra payout for the top three), $4760+$4000 for first place, very good structure with 25,000 chips to start (!) and 30 minute levels and only a few ugly blind jumps. It took over 12 hours to play down to the end. You might wonder how I know that it took over 12 hours …

I had a very healthy stack with 16 players left, but made a mis-step calling a shorter stack’s shove with 99 when I really should have realized that he was too tight for my call to be good – he had TT and gave me a serious kidney punch. I had a chance to atone for my mistake in a blind vs blind battle with the same player, but he made a bizarre insta-check-raise bluff on the river and I actually folded A7 on an Ace-high board because I couldn’t imagine how he could be bluffing (I bet 25,000 and he shoved for 40,000 more) but he told me when he busted out in 3rd that he had “put me on a weak Ace” and thought I would fold it. I could write several pages about how ridiculous that is, but I won’t.

With 11 players left we agreed that $200 each would be taken out of 1st and 2nd place prizes so that the 11th place finisher would get their $400 back. At that point I was in serious danger of finishing 11th and not much danger of finishing 1st or 2nd, so I was happy with the deal. But very quickly the bubble boy busted and we had our final table. I think I was 9th out of 10 in chips for quite a while, and then 9th of 9, and then 8th of 8, but I kept hanging on.

I must confess that I ran well at the final table, with two mild suckouts and one serious one. The serious one came when I shoved my short stack with ATs and got called by a bigger stack with KK. Two other players immediately announced that they each had folded an Ace, which made my chances pretty slim – I thought I needed a bunch of spades or a couple of Tens to fall, but I wasn’t disappointed with the 89J flop, and the 7 on the river was just glorious.

When we were down to six players I was still short-stacked, and I was eager to do something that might smooth out the payout structure. This is something that players usually are desperate for (and I’m usually rejecting) but these players just didn’t seem to get it that there was such a huge jump from 4th to 3rd prize, plus the old guy on my right had more than 50% of the chips in play. So there was never any deal. There would come another brief moment when I would regret that fact, when we were 4-handed at 5,000-10,000 blinds and I shoved my 90,000 chip stack from the small blind with T9o into the woman in the big blind who had only a few more chips than me. She had been playing tight and decently, and her stack size made her a perfect target, so I would have shoved any two cards. When she paused I got worried, and when she said “I just have to take my chances” I thought she might have something like Ace-Jack (please not Ace-Ten!) or sevens, and when she said “I call” I thought surely I was in trouble. But when she turned over Ten-Eight-suited I was dumbfounded (as in I had found some serious dumb), and when a Nine fell on the flop I was the beneficiary of an inexplicable $4,000 gift. You see that on final tables sometimes (in fact I think it happened this year in the WSOP main event November-Nine-bubble, when already-forgotten-name made the obscenely bad call with KQ) where people have played conservatively and all of the sudden they just hit a wall or get stressed out or burned out and say “I guess I just have to gamble here and hope I get lucky – or at least I can go home and relax”. For those of you who know what ICM is, her call was one of the worst ICM mistakes I have ever seen (well, outside of WSOP main event satellite bubbles, I guess).

So she busted out a hand or two later and we were down to three. I still had fewer chips than the other two, but I quickly changed that. I flopped a set against weird-checkraise-bluff guy and doubled through him, making me the chip leader. When I finally knocked him out I had something like an 8:1 chip lead on the old guy on my right who had formerly had all the chips. I believe it was only the second time in my poker career that I’ve had over a million chips in a live tournament. I knew he didn’t stand much of a chance and in the end he 3-barrel-bluffed me when I was holding QT on a Q98A5 board, and it was over.

12.5 hours, 99 players, 1st place, $4560 plus $2500 plus $1500 travel voucher plus a “Tulalip Casino Poker Tournament Champion” card cover to add to my collection.

There’s a very bizarre coincidence here. It certainly doesn’t happen very often that I (or anyone) win back-to-back live tournaments (with more than a handful of players in them). I’ve posted about it once before in my blog:

2007:
August 15: Roxy’s, 1st of 35, $1360
August 28: Muckleshoot, 1st of 40 (Deb took 2nd), $1200

2011:
August 14: Muckleshoot, 1st of 60, $4200
August 28: Tulalip, 1st of 99, $8500

Weird. But I’ll take it. Hopefully I can continue the Seattle-area live poker streak into September. Muckleshoot has their end-of-Summer series happening September 9-10-11 with $300, $500 and $1000 buyin events, and I’m planning on playing all of them. Josh will be flying in for the event from Florida, so hopefully we can each final-table a couple of them (or I’ll just win all three and keep the streak alive).

It’s always hard coming back from the WSOP and attempting to re-integrate into whatever semblance of a normal life I have in Seattle (yes, I know my life is far from “normal”, but bear with me) - switching gears from being completely focused and immersed in poker, having to choose between the many different tournaments I could play on any given day, and the inexorable buildup to (and nearly inevitable letdown from) the ever-looming main event … back to humdrum pajama-clad layabout home-(and now dog-)owner married-guy life. In the past it has always been difficult to adjust back to playing poker online, but this year I don’t even have that struggle, since online poker is effectively dead, at least for the time being. I usually have a week or two of limbo/malaise and then get back into playing online and the rest of life, and last year I had a juicy acting gig to look forward to. But this year things are pretty empty & bleak on the poker front – online poker is gone, and for live poker I can drive 20 minutes to play in pathetic little cash games and tournaments or 40 minutes to play in decent-sized cash games and slightly less pathetic tournaments. Add to that my mom’s illness and my month back from Vegas has been unusually depressed & aimless (mom is actually doing surprisingly well given that she was given about a year … about a year ago – she shows some slow signs of deteriorating health but no dramatic downturns or obvious cancer symptoms, and her spirits are, all things considered, not too bad).

In spite of its deficiencies, I’ve been playing some live poker when I can – mostly playing $2-5 no-limit hold’em (cash game) at the Snoqualmie tribal casino (40 minutes East of Seattle). I’ve done well there, I think winning something like 7 out of 8 sessions including a few before the WSOP. That win-rate is probably not sustainable, but I feel good about my ability to churn a profit there. This past Friday I decided to mix it up and try playing at Muckleshoot (another tribal casino, 40 minutes South), thinking that the $3-5 game there might be weak because they run a $5-10 game on Friday nights, so the better players would hopefully be in that game. The game wasn’t really any softer than at Snoqualmie, and I suffered my worst cash game loss in a while, dropping almost $1,000 in a few hours. There was no way I was going to avoid losing money that night given how the cards were falling for me:

- I flopped an overpair with TT on 987 flop, turned the straight, but opponent rivered a full house
- I flopped a flush but (again) opponent rivered a full house
- I flopped the nut straight but lost to a turned flush
- I had AA cracked by 86s

…So I was pretty much doomed to lose money, but in each of those hands I think I could have possibly made a disciplined fold on the river and saved myself some pain – even if I could have found a fold in two of those spots I could have cut the loss in half. Disappointing.

I went back to Muckleshoot yesterday (Saturday) to play in a qualifier tournament for their big Summer Poker Series next month (a $375 buyin satellite that awarded entry into all three of their series events – a $300 buyin, $500 buyin, and $1000 buyin on consecutive days – that’s pretty big dollars for this part of the world), and the first hand dealt to me I had pocket Kings beat by pocket Queens (on a T98J board), and even though this time around I did manage to fold my hand on the turn and lose the minimum, it still hurt, and it was downhill from there for another $375 down the drain.

Refusing to heed the warning signs indicating a Muckleshoot curse, I returned today for their monthly 2nd-Sunday $215 buyin tournament. It’s hard to pass it up given that the only other 3-digit buyin tournaments around here are a weekly $130 and a weekly $100, and the $215 is only once a month. So I made the drive three days in a row and hoped to avoid an antimatter hat-trick.

The tournament started well, and after an hour or so I had run my 10K starting stack well over 20K. I hit a major road bump with AJ on a JT3 flop when a conservative woman donk-bet into me and called my raise, called me again when a 9 hit on the turn (leading me to think she had QJ or KJ) and then bet small into me when a second Ten hit on the river. All the sudden I had to add QT or KT to her range, but she could just as easily be making a blocking bet with my original hand estimate, so I had to call, and sure enough she showed me the KT. Blecchhh.

More ups and downs followed, and I was often well below average chip stack, but I stuck around and found some good spots and made it to the final table with a decent stack. There were 60 players to start, and they were paying the final 6, with $360 for 6th and $4200 for 1st. I played well at the final table, and actually never got my money in bad – I won one coin flip and then lost one … took a mild bad beat when I got all-in with a short stack with AJ vs his A6 and the board ran out KQ7 (OK) … Ten (YES!) … Jack (Booooo!) for a split pot. I accumulated chips on the bubble and was in 3rd when we made the money with six players. Short stacks busted, I did not. With three players left I was the shorter stack, but I ground away at them (the other two were at least decent – I would say they were the two best players I faced in the whole tournament, and one of them actually had some annoying tricks in his arsenal), and when I busted the tricky guy I was still behind but had some room to maneuver. The heads-up match was pretty good – my opponent was very consistently aggressive, maybe a little too consistent. He always raised 3x the big blind, which was a bit on the heavy side, and he seemed to give my smaller raises no respect. I mostly folded to his raises but would gain back the lost chips with an occasional big 3-bet, which he always folded to. I took over the chip lead with a 4-bet shove when he put in 100K chips with A9 and then folded to my shove for maybe 180K more (?). I had AJ so wouldn’t have minded him calling, but I still think it’s a pretty weak play on his part. He continued to play a pretty non-creative style and never really did anything to adapt to the fact that he was playing someone with some skill. He clearly knew that I knew what I was doing, but didn’t seem able to try to do anything different to throw me off balance (I would have had a harder time mopping up the tricky guy). I continued to grind him down and eventually he was short enough that he was forced to call my 3-bet shove holding KQ, and my A4 held up for the win.

1st place out of 60, $4200 prize. That’s my second victory at Muckleshoot – long-time readers will remember the event from August 2007 in which I ended up heads-up with Team Huge member Deb, and came from behind to eke out the victory. I’m pretty sure I haven’t played anywhere near ten events at the Muck, so two outright wins is not too shabby. Looking back at that blog post I am reminded that that win was on the heels of another small live tournament victory, which just happened to fall on this exact same date 4 years ago - funky coincidence. I titled the blog post “nothin’ like winning one live” – so true. Ahhh 2007 … those were the good old days.

-huge

I hopped in my car and barreled home, arriving late Sunday night. I only stopped to take naps, get gas, and have dinner in Portland with Team Huge members Melissa and Tom - roughly 20 hours of driving in 30 hours elapsed time. I’m happy to be home, greeted warmly by wife and dog (I don’t remember if I’ve reported this in the blog, but while I was in Vegas we made official our adoption of Alfie, who we had been fostering). It is always a weird transition time after leaving Vegas, and this year is no exception. After a month of focusing only on poker, jumping between frozen A/C and 108-degree outdoor temps, and eating a lot of beef … Seattle is an odd kind of fresh-air shock to the system.

I think I have less disappointment at busting out of the main event than I have in past years, which is a little surprising given that I built up my stack nicely on Day 3 and then got all my chips in the middle as a dominating favorite (with AKs vs KQs) and got pretty unlucky to bust out. A lot of factors temper my reaction … I’ve been less focused on poker this year; I had the nice score at the Wynn on my first day off between day 2 and day 3 of the main event which took some pressure off; I went into Day 3 with such a short stack that I half-expected to get all my chips in in the first hour and bust out; and I felt very good about the way I played my bust-out hand, applying a good read on my opponent to feel confident that my AKs was in great shape against his range. That’s not to say that it wasn’t crushing - getting bad-beated out of the main event when winning the hand would have given me above-average chips approaching the money-bubble sucks really really hard, but I recovered pretty quickly and am not wallowing too badly now.

ESPN has been doing something very different this year - they’re broadcasting semi-live video of the featured tables, and sometimes even showing hole-cards after the hand is over. Today is the last day of play - they started the day with 22 players and will play down to the fabled “November 9″. It’s actually a great broadcast, with a higher level of commentary than you see on the typical over-edited ESPN coverage. If you like watching poker, or if you just want to get a feel for what I go through every year, this is the best opportunity to do so. I think you can watch it on regular TV, but I’ve been watching it on the web:

http://espn.go.com/espn3/player?id=203064&league=WSOP

They might be stopping coverage soon and resuming at 5PM-7PM (Pacific time), and then again at 9PM until they get down to the final table. They just got down to 18 and are redrawing seats for two tables. One of the Irish gang who I’ve met a few times is second in chips and playing very well - Eoghan O’Dea. The matchup between him and the Ukrainian chip leader and the certain Player-of-the-Year winner Ben Lamb will be very exciting to watch. Check it out if you can - if you’re accustomed to the normal inanity of Norman Chad in the ESPN after-the-fact broadcast, this will be a nice change.

Thanks for all the support for the past month.

-huge

In 2007 I had my best cash in the WSOP main event, and busted out by getting all my chips (400,000 of them) in with the best hand pre-flop against … KQs (that year my hand was AQ). In 2011 I hadn’t gotten as far, and was not in the money, but again my big-stacked hyper-aggressive opponent spazzed out and got all-in against me with … KQs. This time I was holding AKs, and the pot was *only* 200,000 chips, but seeing the Queen fall on the flop still was a kidney punch. Having the jerk say “YES! Spiked it!” didn’t help.

My WSOP is over. I’ve had a mildly profitable trip thanks to my success at the Wynn tournaments. I’m disappointed at not making another splash/cash in the main event (if I win that pot I’m well above average in chips and in excellent position to make the money, possibly a lot of money) but happy with the way I played and glad I got another shot at a main event run. I certainly hope they continue to run that tournament at the Wynn next year, because that’s a freaking gravy train.

Thanks for all the support, comments, tweets, texts, hugs, breakfasts, etc. It’s damn thrilling to feel like a rock star for a few days every July, and damn sad when it ends.

-huge

I had a really hard, grueling Day 2 of the WSOP Main Event, with my chip stack dropping from 61K to 30,500. Yuck. I had some bad luck - early on I called a short-stack’s shove with AQ, mildly happy to see him turn over KT, moderately happy to see nothing on the flop, very happy to see a Queen on the turn, and crushed to see the King on the river to lose me a 30K pot.

There was a brief bright spot when I knocked out a shorter stack with my AA vs his JJ, which got me back to 64K, but I very soon got into a really ugly spot with my own JJ, having to fold the river on a AAT3K board after putting significant chips into the pot (my opponent had an Ace, so it was a good fold, but still painful).

For the last few hours of the night I had Ted Forrest on my right, but I never tangled with him. I raised & got reraised with AA but was shocked when the guy who reraised to 8600 folded for the remaining 18K in his stack. I guess I should have tried to trap him, but I just didn’t think he could put a third of his chips in and then fold.

I will be short stacked coming into Day three at noon tomorrow. Strangely enough there is a player at my table tomorrow with exactly as many chips as me, but everyone else will have more - some of them a lot more.

Given my stack and where the blinds are, it could realistically be a very short day for me, or I could double up early or chip up gradually and start a climb back into a healthy stack. I will have a long climb to get anywhere near making the money, but I’ve made that climb before. Noon tomorrow Vegas/Seattle time, start crossing your fingers, toes, intestines, whatever. I’m gonna need some luck and/or some good decisions, but hey, I’ve survived to day 3 of the main event, as I have done now for 4 out of 5 of the main events I’ve played, and I have my starting stack (which while way below average, is actually worth considerably more at the start of Day 3 than it was at the start of Day 1, so I have actually increased the value of my seat in the tournament just by surviving).

It should be exciting … watch for updates on my twitter page and on pokernews.

I had two days off after Day 2, and on the first I just couldn’t resist playing in the 20th and final day of the Wynn Summer Classic, which has (as always) been my redemption in an otherwise grim 2011 WSOP. It started off grim as well, with me spewing chips and rebuying left and right, getting my stack in with top-and-bottom-pair vs top-two (A5 vs A8 on an A85 flop), as well as other atrocities. At the end of the rebuy period I was in for $1225 and was really feeling stupid for playing a tournament on my day off from the main event, but things turned around, as they did in my first good cash at the Wynn. I ran well, I played well, I found good spots, I made the final table, I made the final six, I made the final three, and then I busted … third place for $11,787 - enough profit to pay for my main event buyin, and enough to make me mildly profitable for the trip, even if I don’t cash in the main event. In the Wynn tournament I cashed 5 times out of 12 entries, with a 2nd, 3rd, 5th, 6th and 12th place finish (out of fields ranging from 78 to 175 players), for total cash exceeding $30,000 on buyins totaling less than $10,000. Not too shabby.

If I can run (and play) as well in the main event as I did yesterday at the Wynn, I’ll be sitting on a mountain of chips by the end of the night.

Josh and Vanessa are both still in as well, both with a few more chips than me (41K for each), but both in need of some serious help tomorrow. If we all make it to Day 4 there will be some serious cause for celebration.

Time for some solid sleep and then some serious focus tomorrow…

[see my comment below for some WSOP numbers]

I’m pretty sure this was the toughest day 1 table I’ve ever faced in the main event of the WSOP. Things started off badly, in fact I raise-folded the first hand (I had 66 and probably should have called to set-mine, but his 3-bet was pretty big and I just didn’t feel like playing a bloated pot out of position on the very first hand of the main event). Soon after that I lost a pot with KQs on a king-high flop - check-call on flop, turn and river, where the river brought top-two pair to KTo. Blecchhh.

I got down as low as 22k before things turned around, with AK vs 44 on a 47AAK board. I got as high as 77k after flopping a set of Queens to crack Aces, before a minor disaster took me down around 50k.

There are a lot of stories, but now I must sleep. I picked up some chips near the end of the night and in the end, bagged and tagged 61,500 chips, just over double my starting stack. I can’t remember if I’ve ever had over 60k before at the end of day 1.

I am completely wiped, and looking forward to gorging at the Wynn brunch buffet with Team Huge in about 9 hours.

Thanks for all the twitter support. My day 2 will be Monday, when we will join up with the survivors of Day 1a.

Stay tuned.

-huge

I have just pushed $10,000 across a counter for a nice lady to count and give me in return a couple of seat tickets (one for me, one for the dealer) and a $10 food voucher, all of which entitle me to play poker and purchase part of a meal. I’ve heard that this year I will also receive a voucher good for a pair of slippers, but I haven’t got that voucher yet.

In about ten hours I will be sitting down for Day 1C of the biggest poker tournament in the world. I don’t know who I’ll be playing against, but I hope they’re terrible. A diminished Team Huge (Deb and Jerry and Pete are much missed) will be joining me for the traditional pre-Day-One breakfast of champions at 10:30AM, and cards will be in the air at High Noon.

Watch my twitter feed for updates on my progress, and watch POKERNEWS for general news about Day 1C action.

Time for some Huge Sleep…

After all the initial love, the Wynn has been unkind to me lately. Two days in a row I’ve put together good runs and gotten close to the money, only to be shot down in spectacular and annoying fashion. Sunday an idiot limped the small blind to me, I shoved from the BB with KQ, and he loudly snap-called me. I was sure I had been trapped by a monster until he turned over ten-seven. Wow. But a seven on the flop put me out of the tournament. Well played, sir.

Yesterday I lost big pots with 99 vs Q7, and with AJ vs 48, both against the same online pro who really should have known he wasn’t getting tight folds out of me. Sigh.

I’m a few minutes away from sitting down at today’s $1500 bracelet event. Watch my twitter feed for updates: twitter.com/hugepoker

Finished 6th out of 122 at the Wynn for $2,881.  Much tougher field today.

At 6-handed my opponents consisted of a very good, very aggressive, very young, very blond Finnish kid with a ton of chips, and four wimpy passive terrified players.  It was very frustrating that I busted out by losing two back-to-back coinflips, because it would have been very fun and profitable taking turns with him bullying the other players and then battling him heads up for the $18K first prize.

They’ve run this tournament for the last 8 days.  I’ve played it 7 times.  4 cashes, 3 final tables, $18,500 cash prizes on $5,700 invested.

I can’t remember if I’ve posted this before - if anyone wants to make a mad impetuous jump to Vegas, I’ve got some cheap duplicate hotel reservations that I’ll have to release soon - starting July 4.  Team Huge is arriving on July 7/8 for the weekend so that’s when the party starts, but I’m happy to have visitors/rooters any time.